Upset snake...

[-ryan-]

But look at the bright side...there's so many big corporations & very wealthy people that pay NO taxes at all, aren't you happy for them?

Absolutely. The largest and most successful corporations are owned by people like you and me via stock or stock mutual funds (mostly held in retirement accounts). While you don't pay income taxes on earnings on the investments held in retirement accounts, corporations must pay corporate taxes before paying dividends, so the lower tax rates mean more money passes through to investors like myself and anyone else with a 401k, IRA, pension, 529 plan, or vanilla brokerage account. That's good news!

I was working in financial planning and investment management when the new tax bill was signed into law and I read the whole thing and did a lot of math on a very smart computer. Generally speaking, the benefits went overwhelmingly to low to middle income workers like myself. If you live in a very HCOL area, have a high income and have an expensive home, you lost some deductions and very likely your taxes went up. Myself, I live a very average lifestyle, and based on a true calculation of taxes 2017 vs. 2018 my wife and I saved about $2,000. We didn't see this difference at tax time, but rather throughout the year.

People see that they either aren't getting a refund this year, or their refund amount went down, and assume they are somehow paying more in taxes. But back in February 2018 we all got a raise in net pay when the withholding tables changed (if you didn't, you should probably have a serious discussion with your employer about where the extra money from your paycheck went, because it didn't go toward taxes). You have to take that into consideration when determining if you gained or lost from the new tax laws. When you get your taxes done, you should be able to find a line that shows total taxes paid, and if your income did not significantly change from 2017 to 2018 you could take last year's tax return and find the same information. That will give you a real comparison.

Anyway, just figured I would throw a few relevant points out there. I'm glad we can have a discussion on taxes here without it becoming political and pointless! It seems like there's no safe place elsewhere online to discuss this stuff.